First Week in the MTC!

Well hello everyone!

Can't believe it's already been a week since I left. I'm glad time flies. I love it here, but I am anxious to get out in the field and out of my classroom!

So the first day was really good. Second day not so much... but every day after that was great. It is very different than what I am used to. It's funny though... the Lord sure does bless his children. Something I thought I would have a really hard time with was waking up early. It actually has been the least of my worries. It usually makes me very grumpy and takes me hours to wake up but I have been up out of bed alert every morning usually at 5:50 ish. It's nice.

SO I am sure you want me to walk you through a regular day. Well,

• wake up around 6
• exercise 30 mins
• get ready until 7:30
• Personal Study in class at 7:30
• Breakfast at 8:30
• Comp study till 9:30 (or somewhere around there)
• Class for 3 hours
• TRC (training resource center) where we teach investigators (I'll explain later) for 45 mins
• Lunch 140
• Class for 3 more hours
• another TRC
• Dinner 6:40
• Some sort of devotional or branch meeting or zone meeting
• Planning time (for investigators and such) 9-9:30
• Journaling/Personal time till 10:30

So there is my whole day most days!

Today is Pday and we got to go to the 9 o clock sesh at the temple. It was wonderful. Except that I slept through the first half of the session until we had to stand up...oops. I guess I don't sleep very well here because as I hard as I try to stay awake, I usually doze off in personal study too! Anyways back to the temple, I've never felt so close to Heavenly Father, and the Provo temple is beautiful.

Right now I am doing my Laundry.

So my companion! Her name is Sister Brock, she is from Salem, Oregon. I love her. It is hard sometimes though because she just got out of high school and she really likes to be in charge and to be the one talking... haha sometimes that is hard but I am sure I do annoying things too. We are pretty similar though, we even dress the same. We actually have a few of the same things it's funny. But we work pretty well together.

I love my district!! They are so great. There are 4 sisters (including me) and 4 elders. All the sisters are going to temple square, and all the elders are going to Australia Brisbane! Sister Jones in my district is from Washington D.C. and she reminds me so much of Emily Baczuk... She dresses like her, acts like her, and even looks like her if she had red hair! She's funny. Sister Richardson is her companion, she is from North Carolina.

Anyway, It has been so nice to get some 'Dear Elders' this week, thank you for those!

Okay so now I will explain about how I teach. So my district of 8 people are a pilot District. Out of the 600 new missionaries that we got last Wednesday, our 8 missionaries were chosen to be this pilot district. I still am not entirely sure on what it entails, all I know it that all the other missionaries didn't start TRC until yesterday, and we started our 2nd day. So we basically got thrown to the wolves! Also, we have the heads of the teaching department teaching us, so we should be pretty prepared by the end of our MTC stay!

So TRC is where we teach investigators. These investigators are paid by the MTC to basically be actors. With each set of missionaries that teach them, they start as if they have never talked to missionaries before basically. Most of them are LDS who are converts so it's their real story, but some of them are actually non-members so it's a little scary. There are small rooms that just have three chairs in them which serve as their "home" and there is a big camera filming us teach every lesson. So each investigator is different. Some are so difficult and don't even let you in the door! If we hadn't been told, we would all think they were really investigators, they do such a good job of acting and never break character.

Well, long story short I love being a missionary and I love all of you. So does God. Oh!!! everyone look up the MTC devotional by Elder Bednar, Character of Christ. Please do it it is amazing. Watch it it will change your life!

Love you everyone